INSECT HOMES
Nothing in the insect world interests me more than their homes. The collector sees many of these in his rounds, and begins to consider how he can complete his series by adding samples of them as specimens to his collection. I was lucky enough to find, when on a collecting trip one day, a curious structure made of mud on a weed stem. It was declared by the professor to be an ants' "cow-shed." Knowing that the museum specimen was in a bad state of repair I readily offered my find to replace it. The professor refused the gift, but offered me what he thought it was worth. I accepted and bought a pair of shoes with the money, which shows that these things have a market value.
It is well to press a specimen of the favourite food plant of a species of insect and make it a part of the collection. But dried butterflies, fastened in utterly unnatural attitudes upon dried plants they would scorn to eat in life, framed or put under glass globes on the parlour table do not appeal to the naturalist. They are "fakes" pure and simple.
There will be a few among the many who begin to make collections of various kinds who will keep at it. I know one young man who sold his stamp collection for enough to take him on his first trip abroad. Six hundred dollars was the sum realized, I believe. Those of you who have read Mrs. Gene Stratton-Porter's story "The Girl of the Limberlost" remember that "the girl" sold Indian relics and insects enough to send herself to high school and start a college fund. She made up little life history collections to illustrate the talks she gave as special teacher of nature study in the grades in a city school system.
The Limberlost girl had an offer of three hundred dollars for a complete collection of the butterflies and moths of the United States. She had a wonderful collecting ground in and about the big swamp, and she had enough duplicates to exchange with other collectors for things she could not get at home. In order to have perfect specimens, both male and female, she made breeding cages and reared the moths and butterflies. She dug in the earth about the tree roots and other "likely" places for pupæ, she searched the shrubs and vines and trees for hanging cocoons, she brought in innumerable eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalides and the story of her successes and failures fills many delightful pages. It all rings so true that you can't help hoping that you may see her insect collection some day, and hear her tell how she brought this butterfly up "by hand," how she had to wait a year to get a male to complete one series, how narrowly she escaped the quicksands in a wild chase she had for another, and other details of her occupation.